Largest population of any country in the world as of 2023.
One of the oldest civilizations in the world.
Different perspective on Life.
Portuguese impact on SW India.
Beach resorts.
Food.
English commonly spoken.
Cochi
Our first of 4 stops in India as we are working our way up the coast. Cochi is in the Indian State with the highest literacy rate - over 90%. Just thought I would throw that our there.
India is serious about border control. We had to get a visa and then there was other paperwork they produced and we now have a piece of paper I absolutely cannot lose before I leave India I was warned. We left the ship in groupings to get our passports back from the ship with the new paperwork and then go to an immigration person who scrutinized his screen, looked at the paper, scanned fingers and thumbs and then stamped the paper a couple of times and gave it back to you.
Fun part - our tour. It was much better than either of us had anticipated. It was called a tranquil backwater tour. Well it seems we were on canals and a decent sized lake that is a local tourism area. Sometimes called India’s Venice. A couple from Singapore on the ship did the tour because they wanted to see what it was like because they advertise the houseboat tours there all the time. Many of the houseboats we saw were quite nice. It was a fun day of seeing new sites and learning new things. We had 3 stops on our boat tour.
Tour boat like ours
One of hundreds of houseboats you rent with crew
We sat on in unattached plastic chairs on an upper deck
The lake is surrounded by rice patties with homes that often flood
Women washing clothes on bank of lake
Very narrow bridge
Our first stop was a Catholic Church and school - Christianity is common in this part of India. Would you believe St Thomas the apostle came here!! Those apostles keep surprising me in how far they traveled over 2,000 years ago. There is also a local sysnagogue and of course many Budhist sites. The church was nice.
We then went to our second site which was a family house. They had many fruit bearing trees in their yard. We saw bannana, coconut, mango, mangonese and coco. An older gentleman demonstrated for us how they climb up the coconut trees and get them down - made Jeff think of a lineman climbing a power pole. We also walked around the inside of the house and met the mother and daughters. The house was nice inside with tile floors and electric fans going in several places which is why I should mention it was again a 90 degree and humid day.
Click on brief video of Climbing a Coconut tree
Our last stop was a resort on the lake for lunch. They greeted us with leis and local juice drink. The food was quite good and the resort was pretty. I had chicken masala which I enjoyed and Jeff sampled a couple things like a lamb stew in addition to the chicken masala. We got to wander around for a few minutes before we got back on the boat for our ride back to our buses to return to our ship.
Greeting of music along with Leis and a fruit juice
Beautiful setting
Mangalore
While still quite poor, Mangalore has several Universities both public and private. The Indian Union consists of 28 states. Mangalore is located in the state of Karnataka with at least 5 languages depending on how you count. Street signs are in three languages: Hindi, Kannada and English. English is used in all professional employment and at University.
Each Cruise terminal had a warm welcome for us
Today’s tour introduces us to people of the Jains faith. Jains date back to somewhere between the 7th to 5th century BC, similar to Buddhism. Jains oppose any kind of violence and are vegetarians. There are two two sects. Men in the White Sect where all white clothes. The Sky Clad go naked. Today only the priests of that sect are naked. Our tour took us to a pilgrimage site and a Temple operated by the White Sect.
Karkala, Lord Gomateshwara monolith
This is a pilgrimage site upon a large granite hill built in 1432 that overlooks a Temple in the distance. We followed the pilgrim path up 212 steps cut into the granite. In the distance is a Jains temple. Besides a great view it is home to the largest monolith in India at 58 feet. We remove our shoes and walk past as a Priest with a dozen women are in prayer. This site is in dedication to Lord Gomateshwara who was royalty that departed to purify his sole over 12 years. When he returned he was so at one with nature that vines grew from his body. He is not a deity, just an example of what can be achieved. Behind the statue of him are smaller statues of the 24 Prophets that the Jains recognize.
212 steps to the top
Jains Temple in the distance
Vines grow on his arms and the Prophets are depicted on the bottom of his robe
Statues of the prophets
Essentially a rest stop, we visited a Pineapple plantation with the best tasting Pineapple juice I ever tasted. We then took a guided walk through a Forrest of different types of fruit and nut baring trees. Some are commercially raised on the property and others are there to illustrate. To keep it brief, let me point out only two fruit and nut trees. The Cashew is unusual. It’s nut grows outside the fruit. Below top left is the nut on top and the fruit below, its tree is on the top right. Bottom left is the Balsa-tree who’s bark made many a toy plane. Bottom right is the Cactus that with its Dragon fruit that we covered in a previous post and a new favorite at breakfast for Jeff.
Moodbidri Thousand Pillars Temple
Our next stop is the Temple of 1,000 pillars, built between 1432 and 1463. It focuses on 8 prophets and its architecture is influenced by Nepal. It is surrounded by an outer wall and a inner wall with an inner Sanctum we could only look into. The temple itself has two striking features. First each pillar is unique, one even hangs from the ceiling and doesn’t touch its pedestal. The other are carvings of wild animals found around the world. It’s believed Jade traders brought the information of animals that don’t exist in India. Finally the inner sanctum contains a sacred bronze image of Lord Chandranatha Swami. Some of the 1,000 pillars are carvings on true pillars, but it was still an interesting site.
Entrance to the Temple
A few of the pillars
Temple
Temple ceiling
Guards painted on either side of entrance to inner Sanctum
Peering into the inner sanctum
Goa India
Goa was the third stop in India. It is a seaside town that I had heard had
great beaches, so we chose an excursion that included time at a beach. Max was today’s tour guide, and we learned a
lot. A couple of things were very
surprising to us like this region was part of Portugal for 450 years and never
part of England. In 1961, overnight the people went from being Portuguese to being part of the new country of India
who did things the British way, so they went from speaking Portuguese and
driving on the righthand of the street to speaking English and driving on the
lefthand. I can’t imagine having to deal
with such change! Also, since the
Portuguese were here so long, the major religion of the area is Christian and
Catholic in particular. I said here so
long which is not quite true, you see these people were considered part of
Portugal not a colony so to this day people who were alive then have the right
to carry a Portuguese passport and to go work in Europe. Oh by the way, Mumbai was part of Portugal at
one time too but was given to England as part of a dowery in 1660.
Our arrival at the port in Goa had another band to welcome us, but this band was very different. Instead of drums, they played European instruments and wore black bowler hats. The band at the museum (below) again had European hats.
On to the tour, we first visited the Goa Chitra Museum. Like several of our recent stops, we had to
drive for over an hour to get to the museum.
Max spoke a lot along the way and was quite interesting. The museum is about 12 years old and had 3
separate areas. This is a private museum
that started as one person’s collection and what a collection! So, one building had everyday items from
before electricity was common. We all
laughed because there was some kitchen utensils, we recognized like a hand
beater for eggs. But laughing aside
there were some interesting things like he pointed out how the bowls were
shaped differently for storing/cooking rice than for other uses. We saw chairs and baby beds and wind-up
clocks including one for clocking into a mine and a grandfather clock.
Chair for couples who are courting, cuts down on the hanky-panky
After that area we moved on to a small spot with medical
devices. Seems the first medical school
on the continent of India was opened in Goa in the mid 1800s. Moving on we saw a very old printing press
because in 1556 Goa got its first printing press. One little thing he pointed out that amazed
me for all the wrong reasons was this series of small boxes hung on the
wall. There were 8 say 5X8 inch boxes
with names underneath each box. The
boxes were meant to hold the bible for each priest at the church. My mind keeps going EIGHT PRIESTS AT ONE CHURCH!!!! Um not exactly common in the US these days –
maybe a large cathedral gets that many.
Guess I should add we have seen several rather large Catholic churches
as we drove around so Catholicism is still strong here. Oh also they had some artwork depicting the
work of St Francis of Xavier because he spent some time here at the end of his
short life.
Onto the last building – the museum of the wheel. Wheel as in all sorts of transportation from
all of India to spinning wheels. In the
courtyard of the museum there is a 20 foot tall carriage with stone
wheels. (See band photo at start of Goa). It was used only once a year for
a celebratory procession and took 200 people to pull it and to stop it since no
brakes which meant someone was often run over by it. It was quite impressive. It came from a temple that is now
partially under water because of a dam that was built – supposedly you can see
the water stain levels on the carriage.
Other carriages included hearses for Christians, family wagons/carriages
for pulling by person or animal including one for a camel. There were also some bicycle based options
including one with a wagon on the back for goods and another that was a
rickshaw. After that onto the beach!
Top are Rickshaws Bottom carried a bride Bottom right is a hearse
Taj Exotica Beach Resort
Max said this is the nicest resort in that part
of Goa and it was quite nice as in Jeff and I could see ourselves coming back
if we were in India. Also he pointed out
that part of the G20 summit that is going on right now is happening at that
resort and others nearby. Yes the
bigwigs are in New Delhi (I think) but others were there and I did see a
billboard on the highway welcoming them by the airport. We only got to spend 2 hours there, but it
was nice. The temperature was good and there was a nice breeze. The beach had covered chase chairs, a bar and water sports rentals. Only ding is the water is muddy, but it was warm and shallow so Jeff
could play in the deeper waves while a mother and daughter from the boat and I
played in the shallower waves. We of
course also did a beach walk. We saw
some familiar looking seashells and could tell they had a ghost crab of some
sort but we did not see them well. There
is a fair amount of grounds that are nicely manicured with some little statues
around, an outdoor chess set and a pool area.
We ended with some “light refreshments” which really was a lunch with
finger sandwiches, some tempura fried veggies, dessert options and some local
drinks. It was all quite lovely and way
too fast, but the ship was leaving the port at 4 for some reason and we had to
go to get on the ship. So we could sail off to Mumbai.
This was a late port addition to our itinerary.It was added when Myanmar was dropped.We stopped in Colombo which is the largest
city and was the capital until a few years ago.I had no clue until a guide said something that this country had
declared bankruptcy in late 2022.It
really did not affect us except that it explained some of the half-built
construction sites that we saw.The
Chinese our helping build/expand the port which is all shipping except for a
berth or 2 for cruise ships.They are also
financing a new highway around the port.Sri Lanka is another former British colony so driving on the left-hand
side of the road and English heavily spoken.The populace is well educated too with the highest literacy rate in the
region – 90+% so probably as high as USA if not higher.Tea and cinnamon are two of the major
products most will recognize from Sri Lanka.Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon at one time so if you know Ceylon tea you
know Sri Lanka tea.
Tea Plantation
We chose to visit a tea plantation the first day we were in
port.It was the Ingiriya Tea Plantation
up in the hills of the country.It was a
1 ½ hour drive to the plantation.Along
the way our guide told us some about the history of Sri Lanka and taught us
about rubber plantations and other agricultural products.We saw lots of small rice fields along the
way. We stopped at an old British road house for a rest stop. It was a beautiful setting with large trees (including Bread Fruit) and a few monkeys.
British Road House
Most of the agriculture in this
country is small and has not changed in hundreds of years so done in very
manual ways.For example, with the tea
it is all picked by hand. It is partly
done that way because the tea plantation we went to is very high quality tea so
only new growth is picked.Apparently in
India and some other places it is done by machinery and more of the plant is
picked.Back to our tour.They showed us how they tap rubber trees for
the sap that becomes latex/rubber.Natural rubber is regaining its popularity over manmade but there is a
staffing problem (never heard that problem anywhere else lately have we!).
Click on the Video below to watch a tree being tapped
We then moved on to the tea plantation itself.Tea plants are a relative of camelias.There were fields of the plant with a few trees for shade. The tea
plantation is an old-fashioned factory town.The women pick the leaves, the men weed, etc; there is a school for the
younger kids, a hospital and housing is provided.There is also a group of people that work
inside the plant.They pick the leaves
in the morning take a break and then again in the afternoon.The workers are heavily of Indian descent
because the Sri Lankans were not willing to work for the English when the
plantations were established.It came
across as a hard life.
Click below to watch her picking and stuffing leaves in the bag on her head
The ladies pick a kilos worth of leaves at a time dumping
the leaves in a bag they wear on their heads.The bags are then put in a trailer that is taken up to the factory where
the bags are lifted up to the second floor of the factory.All of the equipment in the factory is pretty
much a 100 years old so not a fancy process.The leaves are immediately spread out on tables to dry with hot air
blowing on them.I think it was 12 hours
that leaves are set to dry and then they are moved on in the process.There was a crushing machine to break up the
small stems and leaves there were several lines with sifting sheets to get the
small pieces out and then send the larger ones to be crushed/broken again.After being broken up the leaves are again
set aside to dry.After drying the one
new machine a color sorter was used to sort the leaves by their color.The different colors become different
quality/types of tea.They sift and sort
and dry the leaves several times before they consider them ready for
packaging.This was all loose tea no tea
bags here!It was quite interesting but
also quite warm in the factory. It smelled wonderful.
Bottom right is new machine with 7 cameras to grade and sort tea leaves
Drying table
After the factory itself, we went to the manager’s house to
try some of this tea and of course for the opportunity to buy some.The factory manager’s house was originally
built as a cottage by an Englishman so that was part of the allure to see a
former Englishman’s /historical house.The house was nice.You could
tell that it had been designed with air flow in mind.A couple of walls were actually decorative
concrete trellis(?) work so not solid walls.It was quite nice.
100+ year old home
Night tour of Colombo and dance
Jeff and I had planned a full day for our first of 2 days in
Colombo because we also signed up for a nighttime tour with dinner and a native
dance show.The nighttime tour was nice
because you could see the buildings lit up which is really good for their pride
and joy the Lotus Tower.The Lotus Tower
is a new building that is a communications tower with a restaurant on a top
floor.The building has a lotus flower
look to the middle floors – it is a nice-looking building.Jeff and I had to smile because our dinner
and dance program was at the Colombo Hilton Hotel and while it was indoors it
did make us think of the Luau we had at the Hawaii Hilton a few years ago.
Top Left Lotus Tower changes color at night
Click on the Videos below of the Sri Lanka dances
Each video below is 60 sec or less
Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary
On our second day in Sri Lanka, we started out on another
long bus ride this time to see Elephants at a sanctuary.We saw some of the same scenery from the day
before.Then all of a sudden, our bus
was pulling over to the side of the road and we got off while our guides got us
tickets.We were right by a narrow lane
with shops on either side of it that went downhill – heading for the
river.When our guide came back, we
started down the lane only to slide off to the left side at one point so a
couple of elephants could walk past us.
Few Asian Elephants have tusks
The Twins
The sanctuary has 2 parts the river area and then the main sheds and
pens.I definitely preferred the river
area.The view was very pretty, and the elephants
seemed happier to me.We watched the
elephants at the river and had seats from a balcony area for a buffet lunch.These elephants have been at this sanctuary
too long, so they won’t ever be released back into the wild.The fun/interesting thing at this site is
that they have a set of twins that were born 2021.They were fun to watch in the water and then
to see up close later in the pens.Twins
is quite rare for elephants.The second
one was born 5 hours after the first and was quite weak, so they think that
often in the wild the second one dies.With
that lovely thought I will end this entry!
Click below to watch elephants underwater breathing through their trunks
